The Sunflower House

Luigi Moretti – “Il Girasole” House, Rome Italy, 1949

With the design of the Il Girasole house, Moretti radically renews the theme of the apartment building, interpreting in an anti-classical manner some of the peculiar elements of this building typology: the base, the upper crown, the layout of the main facade.

The formal scheme of the front is marked by a long vertical slit that divides the facade into two regular parts, further highlighting the asymmetry that characterises the shape of the crowning tympanum and the conformation of the base, the profile of which follows the irregular shape of the road in height and is set back from the perimeter of the building.

The cut of the façade is deep enough to allow the lighting of the central staircase and the access to the apartments arranged according to a conventional type of layout: two apartments per floor, plus one on the attic floor and a very small one in the super-attic. The play of light and shade that marks the façade contradicts the flat texture of the main façade that has a system of sliding windows alternating with high string courses and appears to be separated from the actual front of the building.

Moretti introduced several variations during the construction phase, which are documented in the archive drawings, but the general approach of the project remains evident even in the first studies.
Source: http://www.architetti.san.beniculturali.it